Tag Archives: Jeff VanderMeer

I had grand plans for this Sci-Fi Month and I have utterly, utterly failed to carry them out. So, as a last gasp effort, I looked at my recent reading for inspiration. As it turns out, without quite meaning to, I’ve ended up reading two climate change-related sci-fi novels back to back this month. As a genre, ‘cli-fi’ (ew) is very much in vogue so here are ten reads to get you started if you haven’t already dipped your toe into the apocalyptic waters, so to speak.

Rising Waters

In a post-war, post-crash, post-disaster, post-everything world, the environmental-action trawler Kapital scours the earth’s oceans for its mysteriously missing sistership, The Massive. Captain Callum Israel, a man who has dedicated his life to the ocean, now must ask himself—as our planet dies—what it means to be an environmentalist after the world’s ended. Callum and his crew will come up against pirates, rebels, murderers, and thieves as they struggle to remain noble toward their cause. Can you save a planet that’s already doomed?

Conspiracies abound in this gripping graphic novel series where fresh water is a luxury item and no one is quite what they seem.

In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off from the rest of the world. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children, the only hope for the future, are a rare commodity.

For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. She’s safe, happy enough. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. At first he’s a welcome addition, his magnetism drawing the Polanskis out of their shells, promising an alternative to a lonely existence. But Roza can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to Aashay than he’s letting on. Is there more to life beyond their isolated bubble? Is it true that children are being kidnapped? And what will it cost to find out?

A dark story with an oddly light tone that serves to make it all the more sinister.

Lalla has grown up sheltered from the chaos amid the ruins of civilization. But things are getting more dangerous outside. People are killing each other for husks of bread, and the police are detaining anyone without an identification card. On her sixteenth birthday, Lalla’s father decides it’s time to use their escape route–a ship he’s built that is only big enough to save five hundred people.

But the utopia her father has created isn’t everything it appears. There’s more food than anyone can eat, but nothing grows; more clothes than anyone can wear, but no way to mend them; and no-one can tell her where they are going.

A dark and disturbing version of London as seen through the eyes of a sheltered teenager (thus the tone of the book itself is not dark and disturbing).

Endless Snow

It’s November of 2020, and the world is freezing over, each day colder than the last. There’s snow in Israel; the Thames is overflowing; and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to drift just off the coast of Scotland. As ice water melts into the Atlantic, frenzied London residents evacuate by the thousands for warmer temperatures down south–but not Dylan. Grieving and ready to build life anew, he heads north to bury his mother’s and grandmother’s ashes on the Scottish islands where they once lived.

Hundreds of miles away, twelve-year-old Estella and her survivalist mother, Constance, scrape by in the snowy, mountainous Highlands, preparing for a record-breaking winter. Living out of a caravan, they spend their days digging through landfills, searching for anything with restorative and trading value. When Dylan arrives in their caravan park in the middle of the night, life changes course for Estella and Constance. Though the weather worsens, his presence brings a new light to daily life, and when the ultimate disaster finally strikes, they’ll all be ready.

A quiet, calm novel that puts the T from LGBT at the core of an intimate story about the end of the world.

The snow doesn’t stop. It falls and falls and falls. Until it lies three miles thick across the whole of the Earth. Six billion people have died. A few thousand survive. But those few thousand need help, they need support, they need organising, governing. And so the lies begin.

Coursing through an eternal winter, on an icy track wrapped around the frozen planet Earth, there travels a train that never stops. This is Snowpiercer: one thousand and one carriages long. The last bastion of human civilization. Or is it?

A second train also travels through the snow on the same track, its inhabitants living in constant fear of crashing into the first Snowpiercer. And from this second train, a small group of scavenging explorers now emerges, risking their lives in the deadly cold…

I can’t tell you how bad I think these comics are, but they are really flipping well reviewed by everyone who isn’t me! I love the idea, but hate the execution.

Toxic Conditions/Nuclear Fallout

They don’t believe it at first. Crowded in Zach’s kitchen, Ruby and the rest of the partygoers laugh at Zach’s parents’ frenzied push to get them all inside as it starts to drizzle. But then the radio comes on with the warning, “It’s in the rain! It’s fatal, it’s contagious, and there’s no cure.”

Two weeks later, Ruby is alone. Anyone who’s been touched by rain or washed their hands with tap water is dead. The only drinkable water is quickly running out. Ruby’s only chance for survival is a treacherous hike across the country to find her father-if he’s even still alive.

I really struggled with the main character in this, but I can’t deny how chilling the premise of the book is.

Thousands of them have lived underground. They’ve lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside.

Or you’ll get what you wish for.

The first book in this trilogy is one of my best library finds from the last few years. Read it – you won’t be disappointed.

The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct and the half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind, but the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory.

Man has handed over stewardship of the Earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on Earth, living in the Moscow Metrothe biggest air-raid shelter ever built. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters, or the need to repulse enemy incursion.

VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line, one of the Metro’s best stations and secure. But a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro to alert everyone to the danger and to get help. He holds the future of his station in his hands, the whole Metroand maybe the whole of humanity.

I’ve actually only read Metro 2033, but I’ll get around to the others one day. She said optimistically.

Drought

On a searing summer Friday, Eddie Chapman has been stuck for hours in a traffic jam. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his car and run home, he sees that the trees along the edge of a stream have been burnt, and the water in the stream bed is gone. Something is very wrong. When he arrives home, the power is out and there is no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, have gone dry. Eddie and his wife, Laura, find themselves thrust together with their neighbours while a sense of unease thickens in the stifling night air.

Thirst takes place in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious disaster – the Chapmans and their neighbours suffer the effects of the heat, their thirst, and the terrifying realisation that no one may be coming to help. As violence rips through the community, Eddie and Laura are forced to recall secrets from their past and question their present humanity. In crisp and convincing prose, Ben Warner compels readers to do the same. What might you do to survive?

Another missed opportunity, in my opinion, with a poorly-explored but solid premise.

The Sandman: Overture – Neil Gaiman, J.H. Williams III & Dave Stewart. Such a strong way to start the new year. Although it had been well reviewed, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this given how long it had been since The Sandman series ended. I should never have worried. The writing is magical, the artwork is drop-dead gorgeous and the whole thing just works.

Midnight Days – Neil Gaiman et. al. A mixed bag, as collections like this tend to be. I’d read the John Constantine, Hellblazer story before but it still packed a punch. The Swamp Thing stories were okay, but didn’t exactly inspire me to pick up more Swamp Thing material, and the last story, from Sandman Midnight Theatre, was a bit tough to get into but decent overall. A nice collection of some bits of Gaiman’s work I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise, with some really gorgeous art, but not something I’d advise you to run straight out to buy.

Gotham Academy, Volume 3: Yearbook – Brenden Fletcher, Adam Archer & Sandra Hope. I don’t know why my local library system bought volumes one and three of this but not two, but I’m not okay with it because this series is so cute. Calling to cute is reductive because it’s also really well written, with plenty of mystery, adventure and shady dealings. Since this is a ‘yearbook’, different artists draw each story which works really well. For some reason, this has a lot of negative reviews on Goodreads but if you’re into the DC Universe at all, I’d recommend picking it up.

A Robot in the Garden – Deborah Install. When Ben finds a beat-up robot in his garden, he doesn’t realise that his whole life is about to change. A story about a man trying to grow up and a robot trying to survive, A Robot in the Garden is an utterly charming read that will make you laugh out loud (and wince with embarassment) more than once.

The Trouble with Women – Jacky Fleming. Did you know that, historically speaking, women who studied science also ran the risk of growing a beard? True story. The Trouble with Women is a hilarious and pointed exploration of the reasons why women so rarely appear in history books. It’ll make you mad, but it’ll also make you laugh. Recommended!

Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie. It took me a while to pick this up but I finally, finally got around to it. To be honest, I spent 90% of the book going ‘okay, this is fine, but I don’t really get why it’s such a big deal’ and then the last 10% happened and I was all ‘!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’. A story of ships controlled by AI, an incredibly formal and hierarchical space Empire, and rebellion, Ancillary Justice takes a while to get going, but once it does, watch out.

Ancillary Sword – Ann Leckie. We delve into the politics of the Radch empire in a big way in this one and it really, really works. From the micro to the macro level, everything is fucked, basically, but no one’s about to mention it without lashings of tea. Breq, who used to be a ship, is trying to make amends but nothing is as simple as it seems in a society that simply wipes its failures from the records.

Liv, Forever – Amy Talkington. Right, so, I’d finished Ancillary Sword earlier than expected and I faced the commute home without a book, so I picked up Liv, Forever from the library because it looked short and kind of interesting. I’m still kind of insulted by the description on the back cover which calls it ‘spooky, sexy, strange and shocking’ because Liv, Forever is none of those things. To be honest, it’s a bit ham-fisted, the ending is completely unbelievable, and I can’t for the life of me understand why I gave it three stars on Goodreads (I have such a hard time with the Goodreads rating system because I can have a three star read that I thought was pretty dismal and another three star read that I really enjoyed).

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Omnibus – Ben Templesmith. I described this on my Instagram as ‘zombie!Constantine in space’ and I stand by it. Wormwood is sarcastic, nihilistic and always in need of a pint. He’s also an inter-dimensional alien who sometimes encounter other inter-dimensional aliens with negative effects. Needless to say, I really enjoyed this and Templesmith’s art was gorgeous as always. (But see, I rated this three stars, just like Liv, Forever so you maybe see now how hard I find the Goodreads rating system!)

Ancillary Mercy – Ann Leckie. I really don’t know what to say about this. It contained all the elements that made the first two books so enjoyable and wrapped everything up to my satisfaction. There’s so much going on in these books – explorations of colonialism, racism, classism, gender, slavery, freedom, rigid social tiers, power, tea – that it’s hard to boil them down to a few sentence. Basically, this series is not overhyped. If you have any interest in sci-fi pick them up and you won’t regret it.

No Harm Can Come to a Good Man – James Smythe. James Smythe is one of my favourite discoveries of the past few years. His retelling of Frankenstein dripped with uncertainty and a growing sense of doom, his and the first two books of the Anomaly Quartet have left me in a permanent state of wondering why the concluding books haven’t come out yet because I want them, damnit! So as soon as No Harm Can Come to a Good Man came out in 2014, I borrowed it from the library. And then I didn’t read it until 2017. I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS HAPPENED! A political thriller, No Harm Can Come to a Good Man follows Laurence who wants to be President. To help his campaign he submits data to ClearVista, a programme which predicts everything from traffic to medical conditions. Which is when everything starts to unravel. James Smythe writes creepy unease better than anyone else I’ve come across and, although this isn’t my favourite of his books, this was a solid read.

Acceptance – Jeff VanderMeer. I started this in September 2016, lost the book (it was a library book and thankfully whoever found it returned it) and didn’t get around to picking it up again until January 2017. For a trilogy I love so much this is unacceptable. Area X is inexplicable and unexplainable. In trying to understand it, The Southern Reach transforms into the thing it studied. There are stories, and facts, and artefacts, and even some answers, but so much is still hazy and uncertain and impossible to believe/conceive, and that is what makes this trilogy so fucking good.

Adventures in Space: The Architecture of Science-Fiction – Jon Jardine et. al.This book came out of an exhibition that took place at The Lighthouse, Glasgow’s museum for architecture and design. AND I MISSED IT. I actually had no idea the exhibition had existed until I saw this book in the library catalogue. Gorgeously illustrated, I actually found the book to be a bit of a disappointment as it turned into a simple cataloguing of the styles of architecture featured in various sci-fi movies rather than any kind of exploration of why that type of architecture had been chosen. Interesting, but not quite what I was looking for.

Been a bit of weird week for me reading-wise. I started Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer on September 28th and realised a few days later that I had no idea where the book actually was. I usually keep the book I’m reading in the bag I take to work, since my commute over three hours long altogether, but it’s not there. Which means I took it out at some point but when? And where did I put it? I still haven’t found it. The whole thing inspired me to finish The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 1, though, which I started reading in June. I also started, but haven’t quite finished, The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic by Ruth Dudley Edwards (mostly because someone had the audacity to put a reservation on it and since I have the only copy in the library system I’ll actually need to bring it back on time now). Which is all well and good, but where the hell has Acceptance disappeared to?????

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 1: Squirrel Power – Ryan North & Erica Henderson. This was a belated birthday present from a friend and, as already mentioned, I started reading it in June, but never made it past the first issue. The thing is, I really loved the first issue. It was sweet and funny and clever and charming, and I think I was a bit afraid that it couldn’t maintain all of that. Luckily, when I picked it back up, the whole thing was awesome. Doreen aka Squirrel Girl is such a wonderfully optimistic character, something which is always welcome in the Marvel Universe. She’s off to start a new adventure at University, but finds that bank robbers and super villains keep getting in the way. That’s okay though, because Doreen’s gonna make it all work out, kicking ass in the morning, and attending orientation in the afternoon <3

These were a massive disappointment after the first two volumes. Although things started to get dark almost from the beginning, everything is now grim as fuck. There are no glimmers of humour, no flashes of fun, just death, destruction and so-so characterisation. Kadir becomes a cardboard cut-out villain, while Grant’s backstory makes him even more unlikeable, and revelations about Rebecca are so ridiculous and lazy that I rolled my eyes every time she was mentioned. It also features the absolutely terrible line from Grant to Rebecca of ‘You weren’t my mistress, I was yours!’. This is supposed to be a moment of earth-shattering revelation and instead is actually pretty offensive to women. So, yeah, not good reads. I could also have done with a bit less right-up-the-nostril artwork.

I don’t know why I waited so long to read this because aaaahhhhh!!!! In many ways, Authority is a completely different book to Annihilation. The focus moves from the mysterious Area X to the equally mysterious Southern Reach, the organisation charged with studying and containing Area X. But things start to unravel almost immediately. What do the people at Southern Reach really know about Area X? And what exactly happened to the last expedition they sent in? The further into the book we get, the more unsettling things become. Loved it!

I still don’t like Jon. At all. I felt that his mental health issues were dealt with really well, and his new therapist is pretty excellent, but it wasn’t enough to make me warm to him. I’m also not a massive fan of the sex police. The way ‘Kegelface’ is drawn bothers me (those eyebrows are disturbing), as does her outfit. I’m also not sure about the diversification of sex powers throughout these volumes. I don’t know man, there are a lot of things about Sex Criminals that I’m just not in to. What I do like though, is Suzie, Ana, and the amazing scene where Suzie confronts her prejudice towards sex workers, and apologises to Ana. I’ll pick up Volume 4 when it comes out, but to be honest, this isn’t a title that I’d particularly recommend to people.

I have such mixed feelings about this series too. I feel like the underlying concept just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Hurrah for a school for assassins, but having kids from all sorts of criminal groups from across the world doesn’t seem like the best idea. What’s to stop them from killing each other on behalf of their families? We’re told that violence against fellow students is not allowed, but it happens all the time and no one ever gets punished. Plus, won’t their friendships affect their work later in life? So, yeah… Again, I’ll probably read more of this but it won’t make it on to the list of comics I recommend to other people.

A pretty solid prequel to Jupiter’s Legacy, Jupiter’s Circle gives us a look into ‘The Union’ aka the super-powered parents being rebelled against in Jupiter’s Legacy. It’s the 1950s and being a superhero isn’t as straight-forward as it seems. There’s a pleasing diversity to the characters in this, and although The Union evolve into world leaders, we see them here at their most human. A decent read if you liked Jupiter’s Legacy, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

A scientist creates a device that will allow us to travel to alternate versions of Earth. His idea is that we can find the cure to cancer, the solution to water-shortages, and anything else we need, in these other Earths. Of course, things can’t be quite so simple. The device gets sabotaged. The scientist finds himself jumping at random through Earths that are nothing like he expected, accompanied by a team from his lab, his boss and his kids. And it’s fun! I’m looking forward to the next two volumes which are sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.